The Crucible

             Many of literature's finest works have been a response against a social or political situation. The French Revolution was documented, romantically if not accurately, by Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities, and Victor Hugo in his masterpiece, Les Miserables. An excellent example of a modern event that inspired a masterpiece of fiction is the McCarthy Witch-Hunts. Arthur Miller wrote his play, The Crucible, in response to what he felt was madness on the part of Senator Joseph McCarthy. The author's revelations between the Salem Witch Trials of the seventeen century and the McCarthy Witch-Hunts of the 1950s were so powerful that an attempt was made to ban the book in the United States. By using a historical event and real people, and considerable artistic license, Miller created a dramatic tour de force parallel to the McCarthy Investigations in Un-American Activities.
             From 1950 to 1954, the four years that Joseph McCarthy served in the Senate were his glory days and America's darkest. In May 1954, he confronted the United States Army and its secretary, Robert Stevens with charges that they were Communist agents, and the famous Army-McCarthy hearings started soon after. With a television audience of twenty million Americans, the flamboyant senator randomly fired accusations of Communism toward certain Army officers. With the assistance of his faithful aide Roy Cohn, he was able to put together enough evidence to give him at least slight credibility. McCarthy, however, went too far. Eisenhower, the president in office during the trials, helped the Army, his former employer, mount an impressive counter-attack. They recounted how McCarthy's former assistant and Cohn's conspirator, David Schine, had the senator gain him soft military assignments after being drafted. Over the span of thirty-six days, there were thirty-two witnesses, seventy-one !
             half day sessions, one hundred and eight seven hours of TV air time, one h...

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The Crucible . (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 13:07, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/61939.html